ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the theoretical framework offered by Duncan Kennedy in Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought (2006), as well as the methodology described by Jean Piaget’s Le Structuralisme (1968) so as to explain the manner in which the three globalizations of legal thought which took place between the years 1850 and 2000, approximately, influenced the constitutional concept and protection of property over land in Colombia and China. This explanation provides a historical and ideological context to the current regulations of property rights in both countries’ legal systems and helps, thus, to better understand the recent evolution of their economies. With this aim in mind, the chapter argues that the influence of the three globalizations occurred in the following manner: the first one brought the Roman concept of private property to both countries’ constitutional and civil regulation; in Colombia, the second globalization added Leon Duguit’s ‘social function’ to private property, while the Chinese version of Marxism transformed it into State property or rural cooperatives; finally, the third globalization has determined, both in Colombia and in China, the idea that private property over land is a human right which cannot be encroached upon by the State, even when expropriation would benefit wider society.
